from WTSP.com
TAMPA BAY, Florida - With state legislators poised to send an bill overhauling Florida election law, critics are blasting it as a partisan effort to prevent young and minority voters from participating in the voting process.
In a straight party-line vote, the House approved, 79-37, the Republican-sponsored H.B. 1355. The bill takes aim at voter fraud, but most experts in Florida agree that there aren't any current fraud issues that need to be addressed.
The bill would:
•Force anyone updating his or her name or address on election day to fill out a provisional ballot. Since 1973, Florida voters have been able to update name or address without major issues.
•Force any group running a registration drive to fill out paperwork for every volunteer and paid worker with the state.
•Makes it harder for third party groups, such as the Tea Party, to get candidates on the Florida ballot.
•Halves the time that citizens would have to collect signatures to get an initiative on a ballot.
•The senate version of the bill (SB 2086) also reduces the early voting period from two weeks to just one week.
Critics of the bill say students and young voters move so often, the first initiative is aimed at reducing their voting power. They also add that voter-registration groups are often instrumental in getting minorities to vote.
"I guess the question is, 'What's the real purpose of this bill?' asked Rep. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth.
"Why are they focused on suppressing the voice of student voters?" added Brad Ashwell with the Florida Public Interest Research Group.
10 News political analyst Bill Ratliff says the bill reeks of partisanship and legislators didn't bother to listen to elections experts, who say there is no fraud problem to address.
"Not allowing address or name changes on Election Day will create an undue burden on eligible voters and will create tens of thousands of unnecessary provisional ballots," said Pinellas Co. Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark. "This will also result in long lines at the polls and discourage many voters from voting.
"Current state statutes effectively prevent widespread voter fraud in Florida. The proposed election reform bills contain provisions that frankly are trying to 'fix' problems that do not exist."
In a Twitter exchange, Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, indicated she may be willing to cross party lines on the bill. Via e-mail, Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, said he could not currently support the bill.
"(The bill) actually limits legitimate voters from voting," Fasano wrote. "Florida has always been recognized as a state that makes it easy for people to vote. Both bills reduce that ability."
The bill will likely end up on the desk of Gov. Rick Scott, who said he was skeptical about any measure that reduces voter participation.
But supporters remain focused.
"Can you spell ACORN?" asked Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, with regards to why reform is needed. "We've had numerous abuses and fraud in the election process and we intend to deal with those."
Even if the bill is signed into law, the courts could still rule it unconstitutional if they find it unfairly supresses voters.
Follow 10 News reporter Noah Pransky on Twitter at www.twitter.com/noahpransky or Facebook at www.facebook.com/noahpransky.
http://www.wtsp.com/news/article/188552/250/Controversial-election-bill-soars-through-legislature
Monday, April 25, 2011
It is time to take off the shades, Florida's future is not that bright
From TBO.com and the Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE - The Florida Legislature is poised to cut the popular Bright Futures scholarship program, meaning thousands of college students and their parents will be paying higher costs and less affluent families may have to get loans, seek other financial aid, get jobs or maybe go on a low-cost diet.
Cuts to the merit-based scholarship program would come as the Legislature is also raising tuition at public colleges and universities.
The only question is how much will the Legislature cut?
A House-passed budget would cut Bright Futures by 15 percent — anywhere from $330 to $480 annually depending on the type of award. The Senate version would slash everyone by $960.
"I would just have to get really resourceful on eating really cheap food," said Florida State University junior Charlie Hittinger, 20, a social work major from Tallahassee. "Like, pizza rolls every night or something."
Hittinger has a warehouse job at his father's business and is on the state's prepaid tuition plan so — other than a possible overdose of junk food — he won't be effected as much as Latitia Davies, 22, a junior biology major at Florida State University from Sunrise.
"I'd have to take out loans or get a job, which would take away time I could use to study," Davies said. She's already taken out $8,000 in loans and said she doesn't want to get deeper into debt.
How to cut Bright Futures is one of many issues House and Senate negotiators are expected to wrangle over in the coming days as they begin trying to resolve budgetary differences. Both chambers have proposed spending cuts in nearly every part of the budget to avoid a potential $3.75 billion revenue shortfall.
The Bright Futures scholarship program, funded by Lottery proceeds, was launched in 1997 to stem a "brain drain" of top Florida students to out-of-state colleges. Students could qualify for grants paying 100 percent or 75 percent of tuition and fees at in-state public and private schools depending largely on how well they scored on entrance exams.
Due to prior cutbacks the average scholarship now covers just 52 percent of tuition and fees, according to state financial aid records. That's down from 73 percent in 2006-07.
The number of recipients has increased from 42,319 in 1997-98 to more than 180,000 last year. The cost also has exploded, peaking at $429 million in 2008-09. At the highly selective University of Florida, 98 percent of incoming freshman had Bright Futures scholarships last fall.
Lottery proceeds have not kept pace with that growth, so the Legislature two years ago capped the scholarships at 2008-09 levels although tuition has increased since then.
Lawmakers last year also agreed to phase in higher minimum requirements for Bright Futures through 2013-14 and cut all awards by $1 per credit hour, or $30 a year.
The House budget bill this year also would accelerate implementation of the new requirements, which would reduce the number of incoming freshmen receiving scholarships this fall.
Rep. Marlene O'Toole, a Lady Lake Republican who chairs the House Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee, defended that approach by pointing out that Bright Futures was designed for "the best and the brightest."
"I think our levels have been too low," O'Toole said, but she added, "We may have to make some compromises."
Her Senate counterpart, Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, said lawmakers ought to stick to the timetable that high school students have been working toward.
"To suddenly say, 'Oh, now we're changing it again' just wouldn't be fair," Lynn said.
Other financial assistance would help offset the Bright Futures reductions, said University of Florida spokesman Steve Orlando.
"In many cases, the effects on students won't be terribly dramatic," Orlando said. "We're not going to let a financial problem stand between any student and going to school here."
He also noted that the average family income at the Gainesville school is relatively high at $110,000.
One long-standing criticism of Bright Futures is that many recipients don't need the scholarships because their families can afford the state colleges' tuition rates, which are among the lowest in the nation. The minimum tuition and fees set by the state is almost $3,100 a year for a full-time student taking five standard classes, but many universities charge more. UF charges $5,010.
Bright Futures has been derided as the "BMW scholarship" because well-to-do students can use the money it saves them to buy cars and other luxuries.
The Florida College Access Network, a Tampa-based group that advocates for first-generation, limited-income and underrepresented students including minorities, is pushing for the addition of a need-based component.
Merit-based criteria shouldn't be replaced but adding a need factor "targets the program more to what the K-12 population profile is," said Braulio Colon, the organization's director. About half of the students in Florida's public schools are poor enough to qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.
O'Toole said lawmakers first need income data for Bright Futures families. She wants scholarship applications to include that information to "answer the question once and for all, is it going to the rich and famous, or is it going to the need based?"
Colon's group has compiled its own income figures by matching Bright Futures academic records with data from federal income tax returns. They show 32 percent of Bright futures recipients have family incomes of $20,000 or less. That compares to 39 percent between $20,000 and $80,000 and 38 percent above $80,000.
Adding a need-based factor hasn't gotten much traction in the Legislature so far.
"The kids earned it," said Sen. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville. "There are programs that deal with need. This program is to get young people to excel, and I'd never change it."
The House budget bill also would raise tuition 5 percent for all students in state and community colleges and public universities. The Senate wants an 8 percent increase for the 28 state and community colleges but would not raise tuition at the 11 universities.
With approval from the Board of Governors, universities can boost tuition up to 15 percent including whatever base-rate increase lawmakers agree upon. A 15 percent increase would amount to about $465 in the next academic year.
Bright Futures recipient Alicia Kissinger, 21, a junior psychology major from Jacksonville, said one reason she transferred to Florida State from private Flagler College was because its tuition had gotten too expensive.
"Now moving up here it seems like they're going to make tuition even higher here, too," said Kissinger. She said her parents can absorb the impending tuition increase and scholarship reduction, but it'll be "a double whammy" because her sister's also on Bright Futures at a community college.
Florida State junior Sarah Burke, 22, a sociology major from Tallahassee, has a part-time job as a bank teller but can't work longer hours to cover the increased expense because she must go to school full-time to keep her Bright Futures scholarship.
"Mom and Dad'll take care of it as much as they can because none of us want me to take out a loan," Burke said. "With the economy the way it is I don't really want my parents to have to cover that much.
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2011/apr/24/legislature-eyes-cuts-in-bright-futures/news-politics/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+tbo/politics+(TBO+>+Politics)&utm_content=Google+Reader
TALLAHASSEE - The Florida Legislature is poised to cut the popular Bright Futures scholarship program, meaning thousands of college students and their parents will be paying higher costs and less affluent families may have to get loans, seek other financial aid, get jobs or maybe go on a low-cost diet.
Cuts to the merit-based scholarship program would come as the Legislature is also raising tuition at public colleges and universities.
The only question is how much will the Legislature cut?
A House-passed budget would cut Bright Futures by 15 percent — anywhere from $330 to $480 annually depending on the type of award. The Senate version would slash everyone by $960.
"I would just have to get really resourceful on eating really cheap food," said Florida State University junior Charlie Hittinger, 20, a social work major from Tallahassee. "Like, pizza rolls every night or something."
Hittinger has a warehouse job at his father's business and is on the state's prepaid tuition plan so — other than a possible overdose of junk food — he won't be effected as much as Latitia Davies, 22, a junior biology major at Florida State University from Sunrise.
"I'd have to take out loans or get a job, which would take away time I could use to study," Davies said. She's already taken out $8,000 in loans and said she doesn't want to get deeper into debt.
How to cut Bright Futures is one of many issues House and Senate negotiators are expected to wrangle over in the coming days as they begin trying to resolve budgetary differences. Both chambers have proposed spending cuts in nearly every part of the budget to avoid a potential $3.75 billion revenue shortfall.
The Bright Futures scholarship program, funded by Lottery proceeds, was launched in 1997 to stem a "brain drain" of top Florida students to out-of-state colleges. Students could qualify for grants paying 100 percent or 75 percent of tuition and fees at in-state public and private schools depending largely on how well they scored on entrance exams.
Due to prior cutbacks the average scholarship now covers just 52 percent of tuition and fees, according to state financial aid records. That's down from 73 percent in 2006-07.
The number of recipients has increased from 42,319 in 1997-98 to more than 180,000 last year. The cost also has exploded, peaking at $429 million in 2008-09. At the highly selective University of Florida, 98 percent of incoming freshman had Bright Futures scholarships last fall.
Lottery proceeds have not kept pace with that growth, so the Legislature two years ago capped the scholarships at 2008-09 levels although tuition has increased since then.
Lawmakers last year also agreed to phase in higher minimum requirements for Bright Futures through 2013-14 and cut all awards by $1 per credit hour, or $30 a year.
The House budget bill this year also would accelerate implementation of the new requirements, which would reduce the number of incoming freshmen receiving scholarships this fall.
Rep. Marlene O'Toole, a Lady Lake Republican who chairs the House Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee, defended that approach by pointing out that Bright Futures was designed for "the best and the brightest."
"I think our levels have been too low," O'Toole said, but she added, "We may have to make some compromises."
Her Senate counterpart, Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, said lawmakers ought to stick to the timetable that high school students have been working toward.
"To suddenly say, 'Oh, now we're changing it again' just wouldn't be fair," Lynn said.
Other financial assistance would help offset the Bright Futures reductions, said University of Florida spokesman Steve Orlando.
"In many cases, the effects on students won't be terribly dramatic," Orlando said. "We're not going to let a financial problem stand between any student and going to school here."
He also noted that the average family income at the Gainesville school is relatively high at $110,000.
One long-standing criticism of Bright Futures is that many recipients don't need the scholarships because their families can afford the state colleges' tuition rates, which are among the lowest in the nation. The minimum tuition and fees set by the state is almost $3,100 a year for a full-time student taking five standard classes, but many universities charge more. UF charges $5,010.
Bright Futures has been derided as the "BMW scholarship" because well-to-do students can use the money it saves them to buy cars and other luxuries.
The Florida College Access Network, a Tampa-based group that advocates for first-generation, limited-income and underrepresented students including minorities, is pushing for the addition of a need-based component.
Merit-based criteria shouldn't be replaced but adding a need factor "targets the program more to what the K-12 population profile is," said Braulio Colon, the organization's director. About half of the students in Florida's public schools are poor enough to qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.
O'Toole said lawmakers first need income data for Bright Futures families. She wants scholarship applications to include that information to "answer the question once and for all, is it going to the rich and famous, or is it going to the need based?"
Colon's group has compiled its own income figures by matching Bright Futures academic records with data from federal income tax returns. They show 32 percent of Bright futures recipients have family incomes of $20,000 or less. That compares to 39 percent between $20,000 and $80,000 and 38 percent above $80,000.
Adding a need-based factor hasn't gotten much traction in the Legislature so far.
"The kids earned it," said Sen. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville. "There are programs that deal with need. This program is to get young people to excel, and I'd never change it."
The House budget bill also would raise tuition 5 percent for all students in state and community colleges and public universities. The Senate wants an 8 percent increase for the 28 state and community colleges but would not raise tuition at the 11 universities.
With approval from the Board of Governors, universities can boost tuition up to 15 percent including whatever base-rate increase lawmakers agree upon. A 15 percent increase would amount to about $465 in the next academic year.
Bright Futures recipient Alicia Kissinger, 21, a junior psychology major from Jacksonville, said one reason she transferred to Florida State from private Flagler College was because its tuition had gotten too expensive.
"Now moving up here it seems like they're going to make tuition even higher here, too," said Kissinger. She said her parents can absorb the impending tuition increase and scholarship reduction, but it'll be "a double whammy" because her sister's also on Bright Futures at a community college.
Florida State junior Sarah Burke, 22, a sociology major from Tallahassee, has a part-time job as a bank teller but can't work longer hours to cover the increased expense because she must go to school full-time to keep her Bright Futures scholarship.
"Mom and Dad'll take care of it as much as they can because none of us want me to take out a loan," Burke said. "With the economy the way it is I don't really want my parents to have to cover that much.
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2011/apr/24/legislature-eyes-cuts-in-bright-futures/news-politics/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+tbo/politics+(TBO+>+Politics)&utm_content=Google+Reader
Want to do business in Florida? Bribe a legislator, after all it is perfectly legal
From the St. petersburg Times
by Howard Troxler
Let the record and the history books show that no matter what else the 2011 Florida Legislature does, wise or unwise, it has done one thing utterly and morally despicable, and beyond any excuse or redemption.
With greed and lust and arrogance, on March 24, 2011, the Florida Legislature voted to legalize the direct bribery of the Legislature itself.
That is what the history books will show.
As of that date — for legislators rushed to make it the law immediately — it is legal for the leaders of the Democratic and the Republican parties in our Legislature to run so-called leadership funds to accept direct, unlimited payoffs from those seeking favorable treatment.
Such payoffs were part of Florida's corrupt past as late as 1989. They have been outlawed in this state for more than two decades.
Until now.
There is no covering this up.
There is no justifying it. There is no denying it. There is no rationalizing it. There is no way to hide from the truth:
The people with the sacred power of writing the laws of our democracy with one hand now can legally hold out a money sack with the other.
Nothing is more devastating for Florida — not all the other bad laws, not all the profiteering and sloganeering, not all of the rest of what happens in Tallahassee.
And that is how this Legislature will be remembered.
This is the Legislature That Legalized Bribery.
It will hang around the neck of every legislator who voted for it. It will mar their reputations forever. It will be how they are remembered and judged by the passage of time.
Every Floridian who comes afterward will say of them, "This is what they did with the trust that was given to them."
I have read all of their excuses and the scripted justifications that they sent to citizens who tried to tell them they have done wrong.
I despair for the young legislators, the new ones, so utterly hopeless already, so seduced, amoral, lost.
As Upton Sinclair said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it."
His campaign-contribution payoffs, too.
Listen:
This is black and white. It is stark. It takes a warped moral sense, an unspeakable perversion, to find any gray in it.
The Tallahassee spin goes like this: We are going to get money anyway. So you might as well pay us off directly.
The argument continues: See, this is actually better, more "transparent," because we will list the contributions in reports, and the public can see who is buying us.
And yet, even that much is untrue, because — the money is STILL LAUNDERED INTO LOCAL ELECTIONS.
Local candidates bought by these "leadership funds" will still have their pretty little brochures, and their TV commercials, and all the rest …
And the people of Florida will still not be able to match each candidate with the true source of his or her money.
I cannot tell you how many times, over the years, readers have suggested to me that legislators should wear sponsorship labels, just like NASCAR.
And, yes, it would be better, if every legislator had to wear a label saying, X percent from this or that industry, and so on. But that is exactly what this evil law does not change.
So here, now, is what the people of Florida ought to do.
Here is what I beg my brothers and sisters on the editorial page of the St. Petersburg Times to do, every day for the next two weeks.
Here is what the editorial pages of Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville and Key West and my excellent friends in Sarasota, whom I celebrate and congratulate for their Pulitzer Prize-winning service to Florida, should do.
Here is what the radio hosts of Florida should do. Here is what the bloggers should do.
Here is what you should do.
Here is what you should do right now.
Here is what you should do this morning, and Monday morning, and Tuesday morning, and every morning for the next two weeks.
You should tell them that they must repeal this wicked crime. They must repeal it before they are scheduled to adjourn and leave Tallahassee.
Their fellow church members should tell them. Their neighbors should tell them. Their own wives and husbands and sons and daughters should tell them. The citizens of Florida should accost them on the street and tell them.
Repeal it.
Or else they should not come home at all.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/appeal-to-people-of-florida-to-stop-direct-bribery-of-legislature/1165734
by Howard Troxler
Let the record and the history books show that no matter what else the 2011 Florida Legislature does, wise or unwise, it has done one thing utterly and morally despicable, and beyond any excuse or redemption.
With greed and lust and arrogance, on March 24, 2011, the Florida Legislature voted to legalize the direct bribery of the Legislature itself.
That is what the history books will show.
As of that date — for legislators rushed to make it the law immediately — it is legal for the leaders of the Democratic and the Republican parties in our Legislature to run so-called leadership funds to accept direct, unlimited payoffs from those seeking favorable treatment.
Such payoffs were part of Florida's corrupt past as late as 1989. They have been outlawed in this state for more than two decades.
Until now.
There is no covering this up.
There is no justifying it. There is no denying it. There is no rationalizing it. There is no way to hide from the truth:
The people with the sacred power of writing the laws of our democracy with one hand now can legally hold out a money sack with the other.
Nothing is more devastating for Florida — not all the other bad laws, not all the profiteering and sloganeering, not all of the rest of what happens in Tallahassee.
And that is how this Legislature will be remembered.
This is the Legislature That Legalized Bribery.
It will hang around the neck of every legislator who voted for it. It will mar their reputations forever. It will be how they are remembered and judged by the passage of time.
Every Floridian who comes afterward will say of them, "This is what they did with the trust that was given to them."
I have read all of their excuses and the scripted justifications that they sent to citizens who tried to tell them they have done wrong.
I despair for the young legislators, the new ones, so utterly hopeless already, so seduced, amoral, lost.
As Upton Sinclair said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it."
His campaign-contribution payoffs, too.
Listen:
This is black and white. It is stark. It takes a warped moral sense, an unspeakable perversion, to find any gray in it.
The Tallahassee spin goes like this: We are going to get money anyway. So you might as well pay us off directly.
The argument continues: See, this is actually better, more "transparent," because we will list the contributions in reports, and the public can see who is buying us.
And yet, even that much is untrue, because — the money is STILL LAUNDERED INTO LOCAL ELECTIONS.
Local candidates bought by these "leadership funds" will still have their pretty little brochures, and their TV commercials, and all the rest …
And the people of Florida will still not be able to match each candidate with the true source of his or her money.
I cannot tell you how many times, over the years, readers have suggested to me that legislators should wear sponsorship labels, just like NASCAR.
And, yes, it would be better, if every legislator had to wear a label saying, X percent from this or that industry, and so on. But that is exactly what this evil law does not change.
So here, now, is what the people of Florida ought to do.
Here is what I beg my brothers and sisters on the editorial page of the St. Petersburg Times to do, every day for the next two weeks.
Here is what the editorial pages of Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville and Key West and my excellent friends in Sarasota, whom I celebrate and congratulate for their Pulitzer Prize-winning service to Florida, should do.
Here is what the radio hosts of Florida should do. Here is what the bloggers should do.
Here is what you should do.
Here is what you should do right now.
Here is what you should do this morning, and Monday morning, and Tuesday morning, and every morning for the next two weeks.
You should tell them that they must repeal this wicked crime. They must repeal it before they are scheduled to adjourn and leave Tallahassee.
Their fellow church members should tell them. Their neighbors should tell them. Their own wives and husbands and sons and daughters should tell them. The citizens of Florida should accost them on the street and tell them.
Repeal it.
Or else they should not come home at all.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/appeal-to-people-of-florida-to-stop-direct-bribery-of-legislature/1165734
Steve Wise and the truth are not friends
This man will say anything to get ignorant folks to guy his nonsense and sadly some people are buying what he si selling. -cpg
From Politifact
Here at PolitiFact Florida, we always welcome suggestions for claims worth checking.
This item came to our attention via Twitter from Florida Times Union political columnist Abel Harding.
"Sen. Stephen Wise: 'Every prisoner on death row was a foster kid.' Any way to check that @PolitiFact_FL?"
We were up for the task.
Wise's comment came during the March 30, 2011, Senate Education PreK-12 Committee hearing, during a discussion of SB 1546, a charter school expansion proposal sponsored by Sen. John Thrasher. The measure is aimed at authorizing state universities and other Florida College System schools to enter into charter school contracts with local school districts.
Leslie Poole, outreach director for the Washington, D.C.-based The Seed Foundation, a nonprofit that operates two high-performing "urban boarding schools," testified before the committee about the success of the foundation's charter program. The foundation's two schools in the District of Columbia and Maryland have been featured on 60 Minutes. President Barack Obama held a bill-signing at the D.C. school in 2009, where he lauded the program as "a true success story."
When asked by Wise how many children in the program came through the foster care system, Poole responded that of the D.C. school's 336 students, about one-third of them have been touched by the child welfare system.
"I'll just say this to you members, so you can kind of know what the situation is in Florida," Wise said after Poole's comments."One-third of all the inmates in the State of Florida come through the foster care system. Every person on death row was a foster care kid. This is a program that will make a difference in kids' lives."
As of April 22, 2011, there are 393 inmates on death row, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. We were startled to hear that every one of these killers has something in common. Could it be that all of them had, at one point, been through the foster care system?
We wanted to ask Wise and his legislative staff for the source of his statement. But after calling and e-mailing him and his staff for four days, we never heard back.
So we started looking.
State agencies and advocates
• Department of Corrections: The agency responsible for death row keeps stats on the age, race and gender of death row inmates -- you can view it online -- but has nothing regarding their upbringing, said department spokeswoman Jo Ellyn Rackleff.
"All we keep is documents regarding their conviction, none of which would indicate if they were in foster care," Rackleff said in a phone interview.
• Florida Department of Children and Families: The agency that administers the state's foster care program says it collects no data on foster care children who wind up on death row. DCF does periodically survey adults ages 18 to 22 to determine their status after they leave foster care, and it produced a 2009 report titled "Independent Living Transitional Services." According to the report, roughly 9 percent of 1,500 respondents between the ages of 18 and 22 said they had been incarcerated within the past 12 months.
"We do know that kids who have been in the foster care system have a higher risk of being arrested, but whether or not they end up on death row, that's too specific to know," said Diane Hirth, spokeswoman for DCF. "If we tracked that information, we would have to do it in reverse. Why not track all the foster kids who graduated college and became successful?"
• Commission on Capital Cases: Created by the Legislature in 1997, the commission oversees capital punishment cases and ensures that those convicted have proper access to legal representation. Roger Maas, the commission's executive director who has headed the commission since its formation, said he does not have such statistics.
"Let me know if you figure out if it's true or not," Maas said. "I've never heard that, but it would be interesting to know."
• Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty: This Tampa-based group advocates for the elimination of the death penalty and is headed by Mark Elliott. Elliott said he has not come across any studies similar to what Wise claimed.
"It doesn’t sound familiar," Elliott said, before referring us to a Miami-based criminal attorney.
• Defense attorney: Terence Lenamon has made a name for himself representing high-profile death penalty cases, and founded the Florida Capital Resource Center, which collects statistics to provide to death penalty defense attorneys. He has been featured on CNN's Nancy Grace show and on the A&E reality crime-series The First 48. Lenamon currently represents Casey Anthony, the Orlando mother charged with murdering her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee Anthony.
"I can assure you, not everyone on death row has been in the foster care system," Lenamon said in a phone interview. "I have two guys on there right now who weren't in the foster care system. That right there dispels the theory."
Two killers who weren't in foster care
The two clients Lenamon was referring to are Wadada Delhall and Harrel Braddy.
Delhall was sentenced to death row in September 2008, after a jury found him guilty of the first-degree murder of Hubert McCrae. Delhall reportedly shot McCrae 11 times in front of an auto-repair shop where McCrae worked. McCrae was a witness to a previous murder at the same shop in which Delhall's brother was a suspect.
During the sentencing hearing, Delhall's mother, Grace Allen, pleaded with the jury to spare her son's life, according to an Aug. 16, 2008, Miami Herald article. Allen told jurors how Delhall, her eldest son, assumed the responsibility of taking care of his five younger brothers when he was 18, because she was arrested on charges of drug trafficking in 1995.
"He took care of his brothers, but he was never in foster care," Lenamon said.
In Braddy's case, a Miami-Dade judge handed down the death penalty in 2007 for the 1998 killing of a 5-year-old girl. Braddy was accused of dumping Quatisha Maycock's body in the Florida Everglades, where she was attacked by alligators.
"The child was found dead in the Everglades with alligator bite marks on her head and stomach and her left arm severed," reads an Oct. 16, 2007, Miami Herald article on the trial. "The medical examiner testified that the girl was still alive when one or more alligators bit her. Braddy told investigators he left Quatisha in the swamp because she witnessed him trying to kill her mother, who survived Braddy's choking attack."
The article notes that both of Braddy's parents attended the trial, and Lenamon again stated his client was never in the foster care system.
"I think it's kind of an irresponsible assertion to make without backing it up," Lenamon said of Wise's claim.
Possible source
The closest we came to information similar to Wise's claim was a March 24, 2009, posting that appeared in an online forum maintained by the Sun-Sentinel.
The article was written by Mike Dunlavy, then chairman of Florida Youth Shine, a statewide advocacy group for foster care children. Dunlavy spent years in the Florida foster care system as a child, and was appointed by then-DCF secretary Bob Butterworth to a state Task Force for Child Protection.
In the online forum called "The Slant," Dunlavy described a 2009 visit to Tallahassee to speak to the Senate PreK-12 Education Committee, of which Wise was also then a member.
Dunlavy wrote: "Sen. Frederica Wilson, a Miami Democrat, asked, 'What happens to the foster youth who do not enter the Independent Living program.' That one was easy. 'Unfortunately,' I said, 'many of them fall to the wayside, contributing the root of the many ailments that plague our communities. Without support it's hard to imagine them creating a better way of life for themselves.'
"She followed up with a statistical question that no one in the room knew off hand. Trying to maintain my wit, I answered 'I'll research that,' but you all might find it interesting that recent research shows that every person currently on Death Row in Florida spent time in foster care."
We tracked down Dunlavy in Jacksonville, where he remains active in foster care advocacy, to ask him about that comment. He said he received the anecdote from a Tallahassee lobbyist dealing with children's rights issues. He could not recall the name of the person who gave him that statistic, or what group she might have represented.
"I think it stretched so that it wasn't just kids in foster care, but kids who went through the adoption process, or kids who didn't quite make it into the foster care program but were abandoned," Dunlavy said. "Thinking back, I don't know how complete that figure was."
Our ruling
To us, this claim is woefully incomplete and unsubstantiated. The state agencies that supervise death row inmates and foster kids said they don't have information about inmates who were in foster care, nor do any other groups involved with death row or foster care that we could find. We easily found two cases of inmates on death row who had not been through the foster care system, disproving the claim of "all" death row inmates. A foster care advocate who made the same claim two years earlier says today he can't vouch for it.
Perhaps Wise was just repeating Dunlavy's comment from 2009, or perhaps he is privy to other information that "every person on death row was a foster kid." We wish that the senator had called back to tell us the source for his comment, because it carries a harsh sting for those who are or have been in foster care, as well as the officials, families and volunteers who work with them. If we hear from him later, we will update this item. For now, we rate the claim False.
http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2011/apr/25/steve-wise/sen-stephen-wise-says-everybody-death-row-was-fost/
From Politifact
Here at PolitiFact Florida, we always welcome suggestions for claims worth checking.
This item came to our attention via Twitter from Florida Times Union political columnist Abel Harding.
"Sen. Stephen Wise: 'Every prisoner on death row was a foster kid.' Any way to check that @PolitiFact_FL?"
We were up for the task.
Wise's comment came during the March 30, 2011, Senate Education PreK-12 Committee hearing, during a discussion of SB 1546, a charter school expansion proposal sponsored by Sen. John Thrasher. The measure is aimed at authorizing state universities and other Florida College System schools to enter into charter school contracts with local school districts.
Leslie Poole, outreach director for the Washington, D.C.-based The Seed Foundation, a nonprofit that operates two high-performing "urban boarding schools," testified before the committee about the success of the foundation's charter program. The foundation's two schools in the District of Columbia and Maryland have been featured on 60 Minutes. President Barack Obama held a bill-signing at the D.C. school in 2009, where he lauded the program as "a true success story."
When asked by Wise how many children in the program came through the foster care system, Poole responded that of the D.C. school's 336 students, about one-third of them have been touched by the child welfare system.
"I'll just say this to you members, so you can kind of know what the situation is in Florida," Wise said after Poole's comments."One-third of all the inmates in the State of Florida come through the foster care system. Every person on death row was a foster care kid. This is a program that will make a difference in kids' lives."
As of April 22, 2011, there are 393 inmates on death row, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. We were startled to hear that every one of these killers has something in common. Could it be that all of them had, at one point, been through the foster care system?
We wanted to ask Wise and his legislative staff for the source of his statement. But after calling and e-mailing him and his staff for four days, we never heard back.
So we started looking.
State agencies and advocates
• Department of Corrections: The agency responsible for death row keeps stats on the age, race and gender of death row inmates -- you can view it online -- but has nothing regarding their upbringing, said department spokeswoman Jo Ellyn Rackleff.
"All we keep is documents regarding their conviction, none of which would indicate if they were in foster care," Rackleff said in a phone interview.
• Florida Department of Children and Families: The agency that administers the state's foster care program says it collects no data on foster care children who wind up on death row. DCF does periodically survey adults ages 18 to 22 to determine their status after they leave foster care, and it produced a 2009 report titled "Independent Living Transitional Services." According to the report, roughly 9 percent of 1,500 respondents between the ages of 18 and 22 said they had been incarcerated within the past 12 months.
"We do know that kids who have been in the foster care system have a higher risk of being arrested, but whether or not they end up on death row, that's too specific to know," said Diane Hirth, spokeswoman for DCF. "If we tracked that information, we would have to do it in reverse. Why not track all the foster kids who graduated college and became successful?"
• Commission on Capital Cases: Created by the Legislature in 1997, the commission oversees capital punishment cases and ensures that those convicted have proper access to legal representation. Roger Maas, the commission's executive director who has headed the commission since its formation, said he does not have such statistics.
"Let me know if you figure out if it's true or not," Maas said. "I've never heard that, but it would be interesting to know."
• Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty: This Tampa-based group advocates for the elimination of the death penalty and is headed by Mark Elliott. Elliott said he has not come across any studies similar to what Wise claimed.
"It doesn’t sound familiar," Elliott said, before referring us to a Miami-based criminal attorney.
• Defense attorney: Terence Lenamon has made a name for himself representing high-profile death penalty cases, and founded the Florida Capital Resource Center, which collects statistics to provide to death penalty defense attorneys. He has been featured on CNN's Nancy Grace show and on the A&E reality crime-series The First 48. Lenamon currently represents Casey Anthony, the Orlando mother charged with murdering her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee Anthony.
"I can assure you, not everyone on death row has been in the foster care system," Lenamon said in a phone interview. "I have two guys on there right now who weren't in the foster care system. That right there dispels the theory."
Two killers who weren't in foster care
The two clients Lenamon was referring to are Wadada Delhall and Harrel Braddy.
Delhall was sentenced to death row in September 2008, after a jury found him guilty of the first-degree murder of Hubert McCrae. Delhall reportedly shot McCrae 11 times in front of an auto-repair shop where McCrae worked. McCrae was a witness to a previous murder at the same shop in which Delhall's brother was a suspect.
During the sentencing hearing, Delhall's mother, Grace Allen, pleaded with the jury to spare her son's life, according to an Aug. 16, 2008, Miami Herald article. Allen told jurors how Delhall, her eldest son, assumed the responsibility of taking care of his five younger brothers when he was 18, because she was arrested on charges of drug trafficking in 1995.
"He took care of his brothers, but he was never in foster care," Lenamon said.
In Braddy's case, a Miami-Dade judge handed down the death penalty in 2007 for the 1998 killing of a 5-year-old girl. Braddy was accused of dumping Quatisha Maycock's body in the Florida Everglades, where she was attacked by alligators.
"The child was found dead in the Everglades with alligator bite marks on her head and stomach and her left arm severed," reads an Oct. 16, 2007, Miami Herald article on the trial. "The medical examiner testified that the girl was still alive when one or more alligators bit her. Braddy told investigators he left Quatisha in the swamp because she witnessed him trying to kill her mother, who survived Braddy's choking attack."
The article notes that both of Braddy's parents attended the trial, and Lenamon again stated his client was never in the foster care system.
"I think it's kind of an irresponsible assertion to make without backing it up," Lenamon said of Wise's claim.
Possible source
The closest we came to information similar to Wise's claim was a March 24, 2009, posting that appeared in an online forum maintained by the Sun-Sentinel.
The article was written by Mike Dunlavy, then chairman of Florida Youth Shine, a statewide advocacy group for foster care children. Dunlavy spent years in the Florida foster care system as a child, and was appointed by then-DCF secretary Bob Butterworth to a state Task Force for Child Protection.
In the online forum called "The Slant," Dunlavy described a 2009 visit to Tallahassee to speak to the Senate PreK-12 Education Committee, of which Wise was also then a member.
Dunlavy wrote: "Sen. Frederica Wilson, a Miami Democrat, asked, 'What happens to the foster youth who do not enter the Independent Living program.' That one was easy. 'Unfortunately,' I said, 'many of them fall to the wayside, contributing the root of the many ailments that plague our communities. Without support it's hard to imagine them creating a better way of life for themselves.'
"She followed up with a statistical question that no one in the room knew off hand. Trying to maintain my wit, I answered 'I'll research that,' but you all might find it interesting that recent research shows that every person currently on Death Row in Florida spent time in foster care."
We tracked down Dunlavy in Jacksonville, where he remains active in foster care advocacy, to ask him about that comment. He said he received the anecdote from a Tallahassee lobbyist dealing with children's rights issues. He could not recall the name of the person who gave him that statistic, or what group she might have represented.
"I think it stretched so that it wasn't just kids in foster care, but kids who went through the adoption process, or kids who didn't quite make it into the foster care program but were abandoned," Dunlavy said. "Thinking back, I don't know how complete that figure was."
Our ruling
To us, this claim is woefully incomplete and unsubstantiated. The state agencies that supervise death row inmates and foster kids said they don't have information about inmates who were in foster care, nor do any other groups involved with death row or foster care that we could find. We easily found two cases of inmates on death row who had not been through the foster care system, disproving the claim of "all" death row inmates. A foster care advocate who made the same claim two years earlier says today he can't vouch for it.
Perhaps Wise was just repeating Dunlavy's comment from 2009, or perhaps he is privy to other information that "every person on death row was a foster kid." We wish that the senator had called back to tell us the source for his comment, because it carries a harsh sting for those who are or have been in foster care, as well as the officials, families and volunteers who work with them. If we hear from him later, we will update this item. For now, we rate the claim False.
http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2011/apr/25/steve-wise/sen-stephen-wise-says-everybody-death-row-was-fost/
The next job outsourced to China? Teaching
From the Miami Herald
By Jennifer I. Smith
The bill’s sponsor, state senator Anitere Flores (R-Miami), calls it “broadening the choices available to school children and their parents.”
Teachers call it “outsourcing.”
The bill, SB 1620, passed unanimously through a Senate committee April 5, would create virtual charter schools, allowing students to sign up for them with or without school districts’ permission. Companies worldwide would be able to provide online courses. They would be available to children from kindergarten through 12th grade.
Senator Flores said of her bill that it “can take our education system out of the farms and factories of the 20th century and into the technology-based world in which students now live.”
However, teachers, parents and students themselves know that a passion for video games or Facebook does not translate into a passion for sitting down in front of a computer screen and learning subjects like history, English language arts, Spanish or calculus, mainly through lengthy readings and answering questions in writing or multiple-choice formats.
The Florida Virtual School, which has become widely used in the past year by school districts as a way to get around the class-size amendment, has not enjoyed resounding success so far, at least in popular opinion.
Only 1 percent of the state’s 2.6 million public school students were enrolled in it last year, many of these were enrolled against their wishes and without parental permission, as districts scrambled to meet the hard caps of the 2002 Class Size Amendment without the necessary funding.
In Miami-Dade County, there is a high rate ???? of failure among students enrolled in virtual schools, particularly among lower-level readers.
Online courses require good reading skills, as well as a high level of motivation and discipline. As any parent or teacher can attest to, even when students are good readers, they are more often than not sorely lacking in the motivation and discipline departments.
Then, for classes such as science, one wonders how effective the course could possibly be on a computer. Where are the hands-on experiments that make scientific theories come alive and fascinate children? Reading about chemical reactions is one thing; creating them with one’s own hands and watching them with one’s own eyes is quite another.
Or what about music? Will students learn to sing or play the tuba through a computer? Art? Drama?
And foreign languages? Will students acquire a passion for other languages and broaden their cultural horizons by sitting in front of a computer? Will they become fluent by speaking into a microphone?
As a “choice” only, little to fear…very few parents will choose for their children to sit in front of a computer all day.
The fear is that, while it is being introduced in legislation as providing a “choice,” it will be increasingly imposed upon unwilling students and parents, as it already has been in many instances this year.
Technology as a supplement or a tool in education is fine. A SmartBoard in the classroom can make lessons more visually appealing and interactive. Using computers for research or to complete projects can be very practical and a necessary skill for college and beyond.
However, replacing live teachers with a computer screen? Most people I know would agree that this is not sound educational policy.
What it is, however, is cost savings for the state, as they prepare to slash as much as 7 percent from the education budget.
There is no class-size requirement to meet.
There is no building to maintain. No custodians, cafeteria workers, security guards or clerical to pay. No equipment to buy.
Depending on where the company is based, maybe you don’t even have to pay the teachers minimum wage.
Outsourcing became a trend among corporations not because they could not make a profit manufacturing in the United States and paying their workers decent wages and benefits, but because they could make a bigger profit by paying workers elsewhere substandard wages. As they moved their operations overseas, they blamed the move on the unions. After all, if only they could pay American workers 10 cents a day and no health or pension, if only they could force American workers to toil sixteen hours a day in firetraps with no ventilation with only a ten-minute break for lunch, then they would have no problem keeping their factories right here in the good old U.S. of A. But since those darned unions were so unreasonable...
Outsourcing teachers is now the up-and-coming trend among politicians on the right, not because they cannot afford to fund education adequately, but because they can give more tax breaks to their friends and provide more profits to their friends in the private education and testing industries by paying teachers less.
Until they have their way with that legislation too, there is still a minimum wage in the United States.
But if you can hire teachers in China or India...?
And if you can have U.S.-based corporations running those companies, soaking up state contracts and paying teachers in China and India the “going rate” there...?
Imagine the possibilities!
Imagine the campaign donations!
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/24/2182566/real-issues-with-virtual-schools.html#ixzz1KXciUs7K
By Jennifer I. Smith
The bill’s sponsor, state senator Anitere Flores (R-Miami), calls it “broadening the choices available to school children and their parents.”
Teachers call it “outsourcing.”
The bill, SB 1620, passed unanimously through a Senate committee April 5, would create virtual charter schools, allowing students to sign up for them with or without school districts’ permission. Companies worldwide would be able to provide online courses. They would be available to children from kindergarten through 12th grade.
Senator Flores said of her bill that it “can take our education system out of the farms and factories of the 20th century and into the technology-based world in which students now live.”
However, teachers, parents and students themselves know that a passion for video games or Facebook does not translate into a passion for sitting down in front of a computer screen and learning subjects like history, English language arts, Spanish or calculus, mainly through lengthy readings and answering questions in writing or multiple-choice formats.
The Florida Virtual School, which has become widely used in the past year by school districts as a way to get around the class-size amendment, has not enjoyed resounding success so far, at least in popular opinion.
Only 1 percent of the state’s 2.6 million public school students were enrolled in it last year, many of these were enrolled against their wishes and without parental permission, as districts scrambled to meet the hard caps of the 2002 Class Size Amendment without the necessary funding.
In Miami-Dade County, there is a high rate ???? of failure among students enrolled in virtual schools, particularly among lower-level readers.
Online courses require good reading skills, as well as a high level of motivation and discipline. As any parent or teacher can attest to, even when students are good readers, they are more often than not sorely lacking in the motivation and discipline departments.
Then, for classes such as science, one wonders how effective the course could possibly be on a computer. Where are the hands-on experiments that make scientific theories come alive and fascinate children? Reading about chemical reactions is one thing; creating them with one’s own hands and watching them with one’s own eyes is quite another.
Or what about music? Will students learn to sing or play the tuba through a computer? Art? Drama?
And foreign languages? Will students acquire a passion for other languages and broaden their cultural horizons by sitting in front of a computer? Will they become fluent by speaking into a microphone?
As a “choice” only, little to fear…very few parents will choose for their children to sit in front of a computer all day.
The fear is that, while it is being introduced in legislation as providing a “choice,” it will be increasingly imposed upon unwilling students and parents, as it already has been in many instances this year.
Technology as a supplement or a tool in education is fine. A SmartBoard in the classroom can make lessons more visually appealing and interactive. Using computers for research or to complete projects can be very practical and a necessary skill for college and beyond.
However, replacing live teachers with a computer screen? Most people I know would agree that this is not sound educational policy.
What it is, however, is cost savings for the state, as they prepare to slash as much as 7 percent from the education budget.
There is no class-size requirement to meet.
There is no building to maintain. No custodians, cafeteria workers, security guards or clerical to pay. No equipment to buy.
Depending on where the company is based, maybe you don’t even have to pay the teachers minimum wage.
Outsourcing became a trend among corporations not because they could not make a profit manufacturing in the United States and paying their workers decent wages and benefits, but because they could make a bigger profit by paying workers elsewhere substandard wages. As they moved their operations overseas, they blamed the move on the unions. After all, if only they could pay American workers 10 cents a day and no health or pension, if only they could force American workers to toil sixteen hours a day in firetraps with no ventilation with only a ten-minute break for lunch, then they would have no problem keeping their factories right here in the good old U.S. of A. But since those darned unions were so unreasonable...
Outsourcing teachers is now the up-and-coming trend among politicians on the right, not because they cannot afford to fund education adequately, but because they can give more tax breaks to their friends and provide more profits to their friends in the private education and testing industries by paying teachers less.
Until they have their way with that legislation too, there is still a minimum wage in the United States.
But if you can hire teachers in China or India...?
And if you can have U.S.-based corporations running those companies, soaking up state contracts and paying teachers in China and India the “going rate” there...?
Imagine the possibilities!
Imagine the campaign donations!
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/24/2182566/real-issues-with-virtual-schools.html#ixzz1KXciUs7K
It's reverse Robin Hood time in Florida
From the Palm Beach Post
by John Kennedy
TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott and Florida's ruling Republicans have vowed to pass a no-new-taxes state budget, slash government spending, cut regulations and spur corporations to create jobs.
But many Floridians will have to dig deeply into their wallets to make the GOP's promises come true.
More than 7 percent of the state's workforce - 655,000 teachers, firefighters, police and other government employees - are almost certain to absorb pay cuts as lawmakers pull pension contributions from them for the first time in almost 40 years.
Property insurance, telephone and possibly electricity rates could climb for millions more Floridians under bills poised for approval in the legislature.
College and university tuition likely will go up, even as financial aid is reduced.
And budget cuts in health and human services could leave thousands of low-income, elderly and disabled Floridians in the lurch. With government assistance ending, many would face staggering out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, primary care or other needed services.
But as the legislature opens its second-to-last scheduled week, leaders are struggling to launch final budget negotiations. Scott's campaign promises are clouding talks.
Lawmakers have taken tough steps to close an almost $3.8 billion shortfall. But Scott's demand for $2 billion in tax breaks - mostly for corporations and property owners - may force lawmakers to cut deeper.
Middle- and lower-income Floridians might have to pay even more, critics warn.
"It's reverse Robin Hood this year in Tallahassee," said House Democratic Leader Ron Saunders of Key West. "It seems like all the burden is falling on the middle class and the poor. They're paying more, and all the benefits look like they're going to the big corporations."
House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, rejects the notion that the legislature is overly favoring Florida businesses at the expense of working Floridians.
But he defended the need to shield companies from more costs - even as budget reductions take a big bite out of schools and health and social programs.
"The last thing we need to do right now is to make it harder for a small business to hire somebody by raising the cost of producing their goods or providing their services," Cannon said. "And we're not going to do that."
Florida's unemployment rate dropped to 11.1 percent in March, the lowest level since November 2009. But with more than 1 million Floridians still jobless, the economy has framed the legislative session.
Scott campaigned on shrinking government, cutting taxes and promising to create 700,000 jobs over the next seven years.
Throughout the session, Scott's way has had the backing of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Associated Industries of Florida and other corporate-powered business organizations, whose campaign contributions in last fall's elections helped the Republican Party gain its strongest grip on Florida government.
But Scott was ambiguous when asked whether life would get tougher for lower-income Floridians based on actions this spring in Tallahassee.
"I hope not," Scott said. "First off, we've got to get this state back to work. My goal is to make sure we're reducing the cost of state government. But the biggest thing is, people need a job."
Despite the punishing economy, many people will be paying more.
"It's a tough time to face the kind of budget cuts and other changes the legislature is looking at," said Ed Moore, president of Independent Colleges and Universities of Florida. "It's going to put a lot of pressure on families."
Students at Moore's schools are likely to lose at least $300 from the $2,425 Florida Resident Access Grant earned by several thousand undergraduates.
The popular Bright Futures scholarship program also would be reduced under legislation advancing in the House and Senate, with standards for obtaining the award also made tougher.
Public schools are facing cuts of at least $1 billion under budgets prepared by the House and Senate. School districts have warned that the level of reductions could put more teachers out of work.
"Republican leaders talk about the need to invest in education. But to invest you need revenue, and that's not there," said Sean Snaith, a University of Central Florida economist.
Snaith said Scott and legislative leaders clearly subscribe to the approach that the economy will be jump-started when state oversight is removed and public services shrink to lessen the tax burden.
Scott's plans to phase out the state corporate income tax and reduce property taxes also are seen as lures to businesses willing to relocate or expand to Florida, Snaith said.
"Sure, that's part of the recipe for businesses considering their next step," he added. "But it's a much more complex dish. If anything, market conditions are going to shape whether a company expands or contracts further."
But legislation still being shaped as the session winds down could dampen the economic boost leaders are seeking, because it takes income from Floridians, critics warn.
About 1.3 million Citizens Property Insurance Corp. policyholders look certain to face rate increases of as much as 25 percent next year, under measures supported by leading lawmakers eager to streamline the state-backed carrier and give private insurers more incentive to write policies.
Meanwhile, private insurers may get their wish and be allowed to drop sinkhole coverage. Insurers argue that claims payments are out of control and say they want to be freed from current state requirements.
Backed by telephone companies and state utilities, legislation on phone and electricity rates also remains in play in the session's homestretch. That could lead to higher consumer costs.
"Business is getting what it wants this session," said Bill Newton of the Florida Consumer Action Network. "They're the only constituents pleased by this legislature."
But Rep. Will Weatherford, in line to succeed Cannon as speaker, said lawmakers' approach this spring is a reflection of what they heard from voters last fall.
"The citizens of Florida sent us a very loud and clear message: They don't want us to spend money we don't have," said Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel. "Does that mean that there will be certain areas within our budget that feel pain? Absolutely.
"But there's never been a legislature in recent history that has had to make the decisions we've made."
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/state/gop-vow-to-cut-government-spur-private-jobs-1428286.html?page=2
by John Kennedy
TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott and Florida's ruling Republicans have vowed to pass a no-new-taxes state budget, slash government spending, cut regulations and spur corporations to create jobs.
But many Floridians will have to dig deeply into their wallets to make the GOP's promises come true.
More than 7 percent of the state's workforce - 655,000 teachers, firefighters, police and other government employees - are almost certain to absorb pay cuts as lawmakers pull pension contributions from them for the first time in almost 40 years.
Property insurance, telephone and possibly electricity rates could climb for millions more Floridians under bills poised for approval in the legislature.
College and university tuition likely will go up, even as financial aid is reduced.
And budget cuts in health and human services could leave thousands of low-income, elderly and disabled Floridians in the lurch. With government assistance ending, many would face staggering out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, primary care or other needed services.
But as the legislature opens its second-to-last scheduled week, leaders are struggling to launch final budget negotiations. Scott's campaign promises are clouding talks.
Lawmakers have taken tough steps to close an almost $3.8 billion shortfall. But Scott's demand for $2 billion in tax breaks - mostly for corporations and property owners - may force lawmakers to cut deeper.
Middle- and lower-income Floridians might have to pay even more, critics warn.
"It's reverse Robin Hood this year in Tallahassee," said House Democratic Leader Ron Saunders of Key West. "It seems like all the burden is falling on the middle class and the poor. They're paying more, and all the benefits look like they're going to the big corporations."
House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, rejects the notion that the legislature is overly favoring Florida businesses at the expense of working Floridians.
But he defended the need to shield companies from more costs - even as budget reductions take a big bite out of schools and health and social programs.
"The last thing we need to do right now is to make it harder for a small business to hire somebody by raising the cost of producing their goods or providing their services," Cannon said. "And we're not going to do that."
Florida's unemployment rate dropped to 11.1 percent in March, the lowest level since November 2009. But with more than 1 million Floridians still jobless, the economy has framed the legislative session.
Scott campaigned on shrinking government, cutting taxes and promising to create 700,000 jobs over the next seven years.
Throughout the session, Scott's way has had the backing of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Associated Industries of Florida and other corporate-powered business organizations, whose campaign contributions in last fall's elections helped the Republican Party gain its strongest grip on Florida government.
But Scott was ambiguous when asked whether life would get tougher for lower-income Floridians based on actions this spring in Tallahassee.
"I hope not," Scott said. "First off, we've got to get this state back to work. My goal is to make sure we're reducing the cost of state government. But the biggest thing is, people need a job."
Despite the punishing economy, many people will be paying more.
"It's a tough time to face the kind of budget cuts and other changes the legislature is looking at," said Ed Moore, president of Independent Colleges and Universities of Florida. "It's going to put a lot of pressure on families."
Students at Moore's schools are likely to lose at least $300 from the $2,425 Florida Resident Access Grant earned by several thousand undergraduates.
The popular Bright Futures scholarship program also would be reduced under legislation advancing in the House and Senate, with standards for obtaining the award also made tougher.
Public schools are facing cuts of at least $1 billion under budgets prepared by the House and Senate. School districts have warned that the level of reductions could put more teachers out of work.
"Republican leaders talk about the need to invest in education. But to invest you need revenue, and that's not there," said Sean Snaith, a University of Central Florida economist.
Snaith said Scott and legislative leaders clearly subscribe to the approach that the economy will be jump-started when state oversight is removed and public services shrink to lessen the tax burden.
Scott's plans to phase out the state corporate income tax and reduce property taxes also are seen as lures to businesses willing to relocate or expand to Florida, Snaith said.
"Sure, that's part of the recipe for businesses considering their next step," he added. "But it's a much more complex dish. If anything, market conditions are going to shape whether a company expands or contracts further."
But legislation still being shaped as the session winds down could dampen the economic boost leaders are seeking, because it takes income from Floridians, critics warn.
About 1.3 million Citizens Property Insurance Corp. policyholders look certain to face rate increases of as much as 25 percent next year, under measures supported by leading lawmakers eager to streamline the state-backed carrier and give private insurers more incentive to write policies.
Meanwhile, private insurers may get their wish and be allowed to drop sinkhole coverage. Insurers argue that claims payments are out of control and say they want to be freed from current state requirements.
Backed by telephone companies and state utilities, legislation on phone and electricity rates also remains in play in the session's homestretch. That could lead to higher consumer costs.
"Business is getting what it wants this session," said Bill Newton of the Florida Consumer Action Network. "They're the only constituents pleased by this legislature."
But Rep. Will Weatherford, in line to succeed Cannon as speaker, said lawmakers' approach this spring is a reflection of what they heard from voters last fall.
"The citizens of Florida sent us a very loud and clear message: They don't want us to spend money we don't have," said Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel. "Does that mean that there will be certain areas within our budget that feel pain? Absolutely.
"But there's never been a legislature in recent history that has had to make the decisions we've made."
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/state/gop-vow-to-cut-government-spur-private-jobs-1428286.html?page=2
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Ready, set, fail, standardized tests in education
From Recordnet.com
By James Mason
With millions of students across California sitting down this month, No. 2 pencil in hand, to take standardized tests, policy makers must face the facts - these tests are uprooting our American education system. As a parent and educator, I was so concerned by the effects of these tests that I made this the focus of my masters project. The damages of high-stakes testing are serious and we must immediately chart a different course for school accountability and student assessment.
The push to increase test scores changes the relationship between educators and students. Students' scores, hanging like the sword of Damocles over educators' heads, have become more important than the students themselves. Schools focus on "bubble kids," those who almost passed the test, while leaving low-performing students behind, placing them inappropriately into Special Education, or holding them back in the grade before a big test.
The literature is clear: students experience stress from high-stakes testing. Massachusetts includes gloves and bags to return the tests that children have vomited on. Older students, deciding that they are not good at school, stop trying both on tests, and in class. High school exit exams, designed to force students to do better in school, do not actually improve student achievement.
Something else happens when students are treated like test scores: they drop out. Students quit because they can't pass the exit exam, because they were held back, or out of boredom. Some districts encourage students who miss a lot of school to drop out, or even kick them out, as Birmingham, Ala. did with 522 students.
The pressure to produce high test scores, despite factors they know to be beyond their control, is taking its toll on teachers, producing anxiety and stress, and driving many to leave the profession. The increased use of test-driven scripted curriculum frustrates experienced teachers, while new teachers, who don't know any better, don't learn to think on their feet. The destruction of the teaching profession does not end there: sometimes stress levels lead to suicide. After the Los Angeles Times published his low scores online, teacher Rigoberto Ruelas took his own life.
Excessive focus on test scores speaks loudly to teachers, students, and the public. What it says is: "If it isn't tested, it must not be important." Students are not tested in all subjects every year, so there is a tendency to narrow the curriculum and eliminate time spent on science, history and art, as well as reducing recess and lunch. Within subjects that are tested annually, not all topics carry the same weight on the test. This causes teaching to the test, focusing on what carries the most weight. Finally, some schools go as far as teaching with test-like multiple choice materials, which is simply teaching the test itself.
The way most standardized tests are structured encourages teachers to teach each subject separately, to break ideas up into small pieces like the test does, and to teach these bite-sized pieces of knowledge. The problem is that all three of these tendencies fly in the face of what research has shown about how people learn. This fragmented curriculum encourages memorization rather than critical thinking, denies students the opportunity to make connections, and teaches them that there is only one right answer, which comes from an authority figure.
Public education in America has always sought to teach students beyond basic skills, even beyond pure academics. We may not all agree on what the other goals are, but they usually include social skills, employability, critical thinking and civic responsibility. This American tradition of a broad and enriched education is endangered by the myopic focus on what can easily be tested.
The solution does not lie only in creating better tests. Even the best tests imaginable will have these negative effects, when high stakes are attached. This is an inevitable result of "Campbell's Law," which says that if we just use a number to judge how well people are doing, then they will do whatever it takes to "measure up." An example: if we evaluated police based on how many citations they wrote, more officers would write speeding tickets, and fewer would investigate organized crime.
The federal report, "A Nation at Risk," warned of "a rising tide of mediocrity." Its cure, more high-stakes testing, has proven worse than the disease. As schools try to produce higher and higher test scores, the foundations of education are being eroded. Tests are designed to evaluate, and the misuse of testing is steadily eroding the lives and experiences of teachers and students, as well as the quality of education.
As President Obama recently stated: "One thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching to the test."
These candid words have rung true with educators around the country, and it is time to make our government act in tune. Our children's future depends on it.
James Mason teaches math at Delta Charter School in Tracy.
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20110423%2FA_OPINION03%2F104230315%2F-1%2FA_OPINION
By James Mason
With millions of students across California sitting down this month, No. 2 pencil in hand, to take standardized tests, policy makers must face the facts - these tests are uprooting our American education system. As a parent and educator, I was so concerned by the effects of these tests that I made this the focus of my masters project. The damages of high-stakes testing are serious and we must immediately chart a different course for school accountability and student assessment.
The push to increase test scores changes the relationship between educators and students. Students' scores, hanging like the sword of Damocles over educators' heads, have become more important than the students themselves. Schools focus on "bubble kids," those who almost passed the test, while leaving low-performing students behind, placing them inappropriately into Special Education, or holding them back in the grade before a big test.
The literature is clear: students experience stress from high-stakes testing. Massachusetts includes gloves and bags to return the tests that children have vomited on. Older students, deciding that they are not good at school, stop trying both on tests, and in class. High school exit exams, designed to force students to do better in school, do not actually improve student achievement.
Something else happens when students are treated like test scores: they drop out. Students quit because they can't pass the exit exam, because they were held back, or out of boredom. Some districts encourage students who miss a lot of school to drop out, or even kick them out, as Birmingham, Ala. did with 522 students.
The pressure to produce high test scores, despite factors they know to be beyond their control, is taking its toll on teachers, producing anxiety and stress, and driving many to leave the profession. The increased use of test-driven scripted curriculum frustrates experienced teachers, while new teachers, who don't know any better, don't learn to think on their feet. The destruction of the teaching profession does not end there: sometimes stress levels lead to suicide. After the Los Angeles Times published his low scores online, teacher Rigoberto Ruelas took his own life.
Excessive focus on test scores speaks loudly to teachers, students, and the public. What it says is: "If it isn't tested, it must not be important." Students are not tested in all subjects every year, so there is a tendency to narrow the curriculum and eliminate time spent on science, history and art, as well as reducing recess and lunch. Within subjects that are tested annually, not all topics carry the same weight on the test. This causes teaching to the test, focusing on what carries the most weight. Finally, some schools go as far as teaching with test-like multiple choice materials, which is simply teaching the test itself.
The way most standardized tests are structured encourages teachers to teach each subject separately, to break ideas up into small pieces like the test does, and to teach these bite-sized pieces of knowledge. The problem is that all three of these tendencies fly in the face of what research has shown about how people learn. This fragmented curriculum encourages memorization rather than critical thinking, denies students the opportunity to make connections, and teaches them that there is only one right answer, which comes from an authority figure.
Public education in America has always sought to teach students beyond basic skills, even beyond pure academics. We may not all agree on what the other goals are, but they usually include social skills, employability, critical thinking and civic responsibility. This American tradition of a broad and enriched education is endangered by the myopic focus on what can easily be tested.
The solution does not lie only in creating better tests. Even the best tests imaginable will have these negative effects, when high stakes are attached. This is an inevitable result of "Campbell's Law," which says that if we just use a number to judge how well people are doing, then they will do whatever it takes to "measure up." An example: if we evaluated police based on how many citations they wrote, more officers would write speeding tickets, and fewer would investigate organized crime.
The federal report, "A Nation at Risk," warned of "a rising tide of mediocrity." Its cure, more high-stakes testing, has proven worse than the disease. As schools try to produce higher and higher test scores, the foundations of education are being eroded. Tests are designed to evaluate, and the misuse of testing is steadily eroding the lives and experiences of teachers and students, as well as the quality of education.
As President Obama recently stated: "One thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching to the test."
These candid words have rung true with educators around the country, and it is time to make our government act in tune. Our children's future depends on it.
James Mason teaches math at Delta Charter School in Tracy.
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20110423%2FA_OPINION03%2F104230315%2F-1%2FA_OPINION
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Clueless: The state of Florida, the Duval County School Board and Ron LittlePage
Wallowing in blame won't move us forward are words written by Ron Littlepage the other day... well sir there is plenty of blame to pass around, first the state should not be in the school closing business it should be in the school improving business and next, is there a more hapless bunch around than our school board. There idea to split the schools is frankly dumb and the board they created to save the schools is hopelessly out matched.
It is the blind leading the blind and our children are suffering because of it.
Mr. Littlepage I appreciate you care about education but in the future maybe you should just write about the river because it is apparent you have no idea what is going on in education.
If not point the finger and demand change! Get the people involved!
Education unless it's teaching rocket science is not rocket science, sadly our leaders in Florida and Jacksonville don't get it.
It is the blind leading the blind and our children are suffering because of it.
Mr. Littlepage I appreciate you care about education but in the future maybe you should just write about the river because it is apparent you have no idea what is going on in education.
If not point the finger and demand change! Get the people involved!
Education unless it's teaching rocket science is not rocket science, sadly our leaders in Florida and Jacksonville don't get it.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Florida, where the corporate pigs eat heartedly from the trough
From Salon.com
By Andrew Leonard
A GOP dream come true: Florida Inc. Developers, start your engines! Corporate cash and Republican control equals fun in the sun for the business lobby
Florida has long been a case study in out-of-control sprawl and wanton environmental destruction for many decades, but in the mid-80s the state attempted to get its act together by passing a growth management law that reined in the freedom of local governments to sell their souls to the nearest deep-pocketed developer.
That was then. Now Florida is governed by Republican super-majorities in both the House and Senate and an arch-conservative in the state house and the developers are fighting back. The growth management law is about to be gutted -- along with just about every other currently existing hindrance to the corporate freedom to gouge as much cash as possible out of the Sunshine state
The Orlando Sentinel has the deeply depressing, but essential story. An overwhelming flood of corporate campaign donations to Republicans in Florida has achieved an astonishing capitalist makeover. It's pay-off day!
Business interest groups in Tallahassee are already describing this year as a "generational opportunity" to pass sweeping "free-market"' reforms that have sat on their shelves for years.
From new restrictions on personal-injury lawsuits against automakers, limits on unemployment pay and benefit cuts for public workers to a wave of tax breaks for individual companies, the Legislature is advancing virtually the entire business-lobby playbook this session -- measures that in previous years would have been too polarizing to pass.
AT&T is pushing for rate hikes and deregulation of state oversight. A private prison operator is pushing a bill that would... privatize more prisons. A power utility wants permission to tax Florida residents to pay for building solar power plants. Health insurance groups are seeking changes in how Medicaid is run. The Florida Association of Realtors wants to cut property taxes. Universal Orlando wants tax breaks to encourage film and TV production at its own studios. And so on.
Pigs at the trough.
(Thanks to New York Times labor issue reporter Steven Greenhouse for the alert. Greenhouse is well worth following.)
http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2011/04/20/triumph_of_the_free_market_florida_inc
By Andrew Leonard
A GOP dream come true: Florida Inc. Developers, start your engines! Corporate cash and Republican control equals fun in the sun for the business lobby
Florida has long been a case study in out-of-control sprawl and wanton environmental destruction for many decades, but in the mid-80s the state attempted to get its act together by passing a growth management law that reined in the freedom of local governments to sell their souls to the nearest deep-pocketed developer.
That was then. Now Florida is governed by Republican super-majorities in both the House and Senate and an arch-conservative in the state house and the developers are fighting back. The growth management law is about to be gutted -- along with just about every other currently existing hindrance to the corporate freedom to gouge as much cash as possible out of the Sunshine state
The Orlando Sentinel has the deeply depressing, but essential story. An overwhelming flood of corporate campaign donations to Republicans in Florida has achieved an astonishing capitalist makeover. It's pay-off day!
Business interest groups in Tallahassee are already describing this year as a "generational opportunity" to pass sweeping "free-market"' reforms that have sat on their shelves for years.
From new restrictions on personal-injury lawsuits against automakers, limits on unemployment pay and benefit cuts for public workers to a wave of tax breaks for individual companies, the Legislature is advancing virtually the entire business-lobby playbook this session -- measures that in previous years would have been too polarizing to pass.
AT&T is pushing for rate hikes and deregulation of state oversight. A private prison operator is pushing a bill that would... privatize more prisons. A power utility wants permission to tax Florida residents to pay for building solar power plants. Health insurance groups are seeking changes in how Medicaid is run. The Florida Association of Realtors wants to cut property taxes. Universal Orlando wants tax breaks to encourage film and TV production at its own studios. And so on.
Pigs at the trough.
(Thanks to New York Times labor issue reporter Steven Greenhouse for the alert. Greenhouse is well worth following.)
http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2011/04/20/triumph_of_the_free_market_florida_inc
Cutting taxes hasn't worked... for most of us...
From the Daytona News Beach Journal
by Derrik Catron
DAYTONA BEACH SHORES -- Bob Graham was feeling depressed Friday.
His downbeat mood had nothing to do with an aggressive schedule of speaking performances across Volusia County. If anything, talking about Florida lifts the spirits of the former governor and U.S. senator.
"I think that whole idea of Florida as a treasure is under assault today," he said at the Tiger Bay Club luncheon in Daytona Beach Shores, the first of three appearances that also included stops at Stetson University and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
The former presidential candidate thought Florida had outgrown the days when its leaders viewed the state as a commodity, when "you could do whatever you wanted to, make as much money and generally get out of town before the consequences were too evident."
The actions he sees coming from Tallahassee remind him of those days, he said.
"That made me depressed."
But Graham -- who never lost an election in Florida -- couldn't be kept down for long. He reminded his listeners that the state had been through tough times before as he shared stories of "people who are relatively new to Florida and don't understand some of our values and traditions."
One of those carpetbaggers became a state official and helped design a new state seal after the Civil War. The seal had its problems, most obviously looming mountains that can't be found in Florida's geography. The state official didn't stick around long, Graham added, but the seal was in place for more than 100 years.
"Now the lesson behind that is just because people are here for a brief period of time and they leave the scene doesn't mean their damage is going to be corrected in a short amount of time," said Graham, 74, Florida's governor from 1979 to 1987 and a senator from 1987 to 2005. "That's what concerns me."
The story drew chuckles, especially among Graham's fellow Democrats, even though he'd preceded his tale with a disclaimer: "I'm not talking about the fact that our governor has only been in the state six years. That's just an observation."
Some of Graham's other observations were more pointed.
He noted that Florida had granted $4 billion in tax cuts since 1999 "at the altar of economic development."
"That's been the ideology: You cut taxes and create economic growth," he said. "I asked the governor's office, the Legislature and some academics: Has anybody in the last 11 years looked at those $4 billion in tax cuts to see if in fact they had contributed to economic growth?"
The answer was no.
So Graham gave it a try.
During the '80s when he was governor, Florida added about 190,000 jobs a year. During the '90s when he was in the U.S. Senate, the figure was about 150,000 a year. During the first decade of this century, though, it had dropped to an average of about 70,000 a year, not even enough to stay ahead of the growing workforce.
Even worse, Graham added, was the nature of those jobs. Nearly 25 years ago, Florida's per capita income relative to the rest of the country was at 101.5 percent. Last year it was just over 96 percent.
"So we've had a dramatic decline not only in job creation but in the quality of the jobs," Graham concluded. "My lesson from that is maybe this ideology ain't working . . . Maybe we ought to look for some different ways to accomplish the objective of providing Floridians with more opportunities."
Graham tried to imagine what Florida might be like today if, instead of cutting $4 billion in taxes that primarily benefited, he said, Florida's wealthiest citizens, the state had invested that money in education and improving residents' quality of life.
He didn't have to imagine, though, because he'd seen it happen in Silicon Valley, North Carolina's Research Triangle and other places that "built their prosperity on principles of quality of life and good education."
Graham doesn't see much future in selling Florida as the cheapest state in which to do business.
"We aren't competing just with other places in the United States," he said. "We're competing with the world. And we are never -- I hope -- going to be as cheap as the alternatives overseas. What we're after is the people who bring the intellectual skills to do the research, design and marketing of those products. That's where the high-value jobs are."
Volusia County School Board member Judy Conte enjoyed the speech.
"He's a moderate, thoughtful type of person. People like that deserve our attention," Conte said afterward. "I certainly agree with his call for more education funding. We need to be giving (students) more instruction, not talking about what we're going to cut."
http://www.news-journalonline.com/news/local/east-volusia/2011/04/16/graham-tax-cut-strategy-hasnt-worked.html
by Derrik Catron
DAYTONA BEACH SHORES -- Bob Graham was feeling depressed Friday.
His downbeat mood had nothing to do with an aggressive schedule of speaking performances across Volusia County. If anything, talking about Florida lifts the spirits of the former governor and U.S. senator.
"I think that whole idea of Florida as a treasure is under assault today," he said at the Tiger Bay Club luncheon in Daytona Beach Shores, the first of three appearances that also included stops at Stetson University and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
The former presidential candidate thought Florida had outgrown the days when its leaders viewed the state as a commodity, when "you could do whatever you wanted to, make as much money and generally get out of town before the consequences were too evident."
The actions he sees coming from Tallahassee remind him of those days, he said.
"That made me depressed."
But Graham -- who never lost an election in Florida -- couldn't be kept down for long. He reminded his listeners that the state had been through tough times before as he shared stories of "people who are relatively new to Florida and don't understand some of our values and traditions."
One of those carpetbaggers became a state official and helped design a new state seal after the Civil War. The seal had its problems, most obviously looming mountains that can't be found in Florida's geography. The state official didn't stick around long, Graham added, but the seal was in place for more than 100 years.
"Now the lesson behind that is just because people are here for a brief period of time and they leave the scene doesn't mean their damage is going to be corrected in a short amount of time," said Graham, 74, Florida's governor from 1979 to 1987 and a senator from 1987 to 2005. "That's what concerns me."
The story drew chuckles, especially among Graham's fellow Democrats, even though he'd preceded his tale with a disclaimer: "I'm not talking about the fact that our governor has only been in the state six years. That's just an observation."
Some of Graham's other observations were more pointed.
He noted that Florida had granted $4 billion in tax cuts since 1999 "at the altar of economic development."
"That's been the ideology: You cut taxes and create economic growth," he said. "I asked the governor's office, the Legislature and some academics: Has anybody in the last 11 years looked at those $4 billion in tax cuts to see if in fact they had contributed to economic growth?"
The answer was no.
So Graham gave it a try.
During the '80s when he was governor, Florida added about 190,000 jobs a year. During the '90s when he was in the U.S. Senate, the figure was about 150,000 a year. During the first decade of this century, though, it had dropped to an average of about 70,000 a year, not even enough to stay ahead of the growing workforce.
Even worse, Graham added, was the nature of those jobs. Nearly 25 years ago, Florida's per capita income relative to the rest of the country was at 101.5 percent. Last year it was just over 96 percent.
"So we've had a dramatic decline not only in job creation but in the quality of the jobs," Graham concluded. "My lesson from that is maybe this ideology ain't working . . . Maybe we ought to look for some different ways to accomplish the objective of providing Floridians with more opportunities."
Graham tried to imagine what Florida might be like today if, instead of cutting $4 billion in taxes that primarily benefited, he said, Florida's wealthiest citizens, the state had invested that money in education and improving residents' quality of life.
He didn't have to imagine, though, because he'd seen it happen in Silicon Valley, North Carolina's Research Triangle and other places that "built their prosperity on principles of quality of life and good education."
Graham doesn't see much future in selling Florida as the cheapest state in which to do business.
"We aren't competing just with other places in the United States," he said. "We're competing with the world. And we are never -- I hope -- going to be as cheap as the alternatives overseas. What we're after is the people who bring the intellectual skills to do the research, design and marketing of those products. That's where the high-value jobs are."
Volusia County School Board member Judy Conte enjoyed the speech.
"He's a moderate, thoughtful type of person. People like that deserve our attention," Conte said afterward. "I certainly agree with his call for more education funding. We need to be giving (students) more instruction, not talking about what we're going to cut."
http://www.news-journalonline.com/news/local/east-volusia/2011/04/16/graham-tax-cut-strategy-hasnt-worked.html
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